


Inferno

by Fessran



Category: Ratha Series | The Books of the Named - Clare Bell
Genre: Gen, Poetic Depictions of Violence, Ratha's ascension to leadership from Thakur's pov, Thakur views Ratha completely platonically as a student and later as a friend, an excuse to mess around with language, since I was never fond of how it went in the books, things might seem a little disjointed since I didn't include everything that happened in the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 17:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20246575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fessran/pseuds/Fessran
Summary: Ratha sets fire to everything she touches, burns from the inside out.





	Inferno

Thakur convinces Baire to let him train Ratha because he knows the cub could be brilliant. And she is. When she can finetune her focus, narrow in on her goal and work for it, she's a fantastic herder. She runs the animals with skill, herding them with snapping jaws and bright eyes, and (usually) following Thakur’s instructions. It’s holding her attention that is the most difficult part of Thakur’s duties as Ratha’s herding teacher. She requires special attention, time he can’t afford to give her with the unnamed pacing the perimeter of clan ground. His lull in training- lapse in judgement if you like- might’ve contributed to Ratha becoming too independent for Meoran’s taste.

After some deliberation, he brings Ratha with him to guard the dappleback herd against the unnamed for a night. Typically half-grown cubs don’t take to the trail, but another herder was killed a few nights before, and Thakur needs someone to watch the herd while he guards from the other end of the meadow.  
Thakur tells Ratha to stay away from the unnamed, to escape instead of fight if they break through the first defense and go after the deer, but she of course doesn’t listen. He finds her in the meadow before first light, exhausted and panting, fur dark around her jaws and tear-lines. Blood. The dappleback mill around the meadow anxiously. She was clearly too tired to round them back up after the attack.  
He’s relieved she got lucky and survived, but stiffens when she tells him about the unnamed one she fought. The one who _spoke_. Thakur feels her circling the edges of his carefully guarded secret- _why_ did she have to come across his _brother_\- but refuses to give her the answers she needs. She thinks it’s because he sees her still as a cub, despite her battle in the meadow. It’s not wrong- she is still a half-grown cub, after all, no matter how much responsibility the clan gives her in her duties as a herder- but more than that, Thakur is afraid. For her, for himself, and of Meoran.  
Affronted by his sealed jaws, Ratha’s trust in him slips.

The first fire starts. Thakur doesn’t realize it’s the beginning of anything until he sees Ratha stare into it, ears flattened, tail cocked to one side. There’s a look in her eyes that Thakur feels is important. But he’s too panicked by the flames to do much thinking. One of their dapplebacks, stupid deer they are, run into the fire instead of away. Thakur tries to drag it out, but by the time he gets there, dodging hot ash and flattening his ears to the screams as it writhes, alight with gold, it’s already too late.  
Ratha drives the remaining deer out of danger with the other herders, following the river, and gets swept by the rapids. Thakur finds her further downstream still floating, paddling weakly, barely conscious as he drags her by the scruff to the shore. The sand churns grit under his pads as he stumbles up the beach with her weight, the taste of wet fur and fear spreading over his tongue, between his jaws.

On the journey back, Fessran takes his place with helping Ratha, still-tired, on the trail back to the clan, and Thakur flees. He can still taste the ashy grit of burning skin under his tongue, in his fangs, flames licking at his face. It’s instinctual, the fear.  
Thakur soon realizes that Ratha feels none of it.  
It worries him. It’s unnatural. There’s a memory of her, fur on end and standing staring at the flames with eyes full of something like fascination, that make her feel like more than the herder he trained. She’s different than him, than all the others. He would admit it makes him nervous.

Despite Thakur’s desperate warnings- more the ramblings of a coward than anything, he knows- Ratha and Fessran bring the creature back to the clan. Meoran and the clan turn against her, afraid of this fierce creature the two Named wield with ease, with power, with sweeps of their tails and high-footed struts. They falter under Meoran’s cold gaze. When he tells Ratha he sees no herder, no clanmate, the fur on her nape bristles. Thakur feels his own fur raise with fear. _Flatten your fur, Ratha,_ he thinks, begging, desperate, _before Meoran can see your challenge_. But his student hasn’t caught his paralyzed warnings. Thakur’s limbs feel weak with lack of surprise when she straightens, slow. Her back is arching, tail unfurling, scent roiling with menace, with aggression, with something that smells distinctly like she’s attacking, not defending. The curl of Meoran’s lip, rolling back to extend his long yellow fangs, sends a shudder of fear into Thakur’s claws. Meoran isn’t scared, but he isn’t disdainful. Ratha isn’t a half-grown cub to him now. She’s an opponent, a challenger.  
Thakur can’t watch her die.  
He tells Meoran how to kill the flame. Ratha’s creature. He doesn’t need to be looking at her to know she thinks he’s betrayed her. This is the final chasm between them, an already-thinning bridge of trust snapped like a bone between their teeth.

Meoran can win, now, so in response to her unspoken challenge, with all his power he takes her name, takes her family, takes her entire world. The nameless cub stands before him, shuddering with anger. Thakur sees the clench of the cub’s jaw and the stiffness in her muscles, the raise of her head, and even without being at the right angle he knows she’s getting that look, the fire in her eyes. She’s a comet burning from the inside out, on fire with rage and pain and betrayal.  
And in that moment he sees what Meoran sees. He sees the cub stripped of her name and he knows that if she stays, someday he, and all of them, will be following her without hesitation.  
Meoran sees it too. And the cub feels it in herself. She knows she can’t win against him. Not as she is now. She has no choice, so she runs.  
Meoran might pretend it’s over, but to Thakur, who trained her, who knows her, it doesn’t feel like giving ground. It feels like a stalemate.

Fessran runs with her. Thakur doesn’t know if they’re dead or alive with Meoran and the clan-turned-pack on their tails, not till late morning of the next day, when Fessran comes back to clan ground with her fur smelling of river water and her paw pads singed. She’s been granted pardon for her mistake. She confesses to Thakur she doesn’t want it.  
Thakur sees the looks filled with calculation and buried rage Meoran gives Fessran behind her back and wants to warn her. It wouldn’t have any effect. Meoran knows Fessran is simmering with pain under the surface, and Fessran is aware the clan leader knows. To ignore it would be her suicide. Despite her scoffing off Thakur’s warnings, he catches a huff of the acid tang of fear in her scent. No one expects to be safe from Meoran’s wrath now, much less the one who stood beside the rebellious cub who had the audacity to stand against the clan leader.

The unnamed attacks grow in frequency and violence, taking Meoran’s eyes off of Fessran for now. The Named heave sighs of relief. No one wanted his jaws red with a clan member’s blood, much less Fessran’s.

It would be impossible for Thakur to stop wishing that the cub hadn’t been turned away from the clan. They need all the skilled herders they can get. And he misses her, too. He doesn’t let himself think it, of course. Doesn’t let what his traitorous heart wants come within Meoran’s sight. But despite what he knows must have come as the ultimate betrayal to her, he still thinks of her as a friend.

The unnamed attacks grow stronger with every season, but the final attack drives the clan from their ground and casts them out. They manage to save a few of their deer, and some of the yearlings survive, but most of the older clan members are killed in the fight. Thakur is glad to be alive, and glad for the closest thing he has to family to be alive, too- Fessran barely made it out with him. Survival is a Named priority. Their clan has practically been destroyed. They try to rebuild, slowly, out of eyesight of the forever-gluttonous unnamed ones. They are still attacked, herders brutally slaughtered and deer dragged off to be feasted on barely out of sight. The grass hums with flies.

A cycle of seasons pass with the clan barely managing to survive, and finally the cub comes back- but no, that’s wrong- she isn’t a cub anymore. Her spots have faded, her fur rough. Something uncertain from her past traces tired lines into her face, her bitten ears, the slope of her shoulders, the heavy crook of her tail. There are scars on her muzzle but Thakur sees the barrier she’s put up, knows she’s far more battered where it doesn’t show. He doesn’t recognize what he sees. He thought she was dead. He’s surprised with himself- and discomforted after all this time of missing her, not thinking of what her return would mean- to find that part of him, a part he would never admit to having, wishes she _was_ dead, or gone.  
He doesn’t wish to die or for the clan to die- survival is, of course, one’s strongest instinct- but her eyes promise change. There is something Meoran and the trail couldn’t take from her. Change for their people is inevitable and Thakur knows Fessran longs for it (but Thakur knows Fessran longs for a lot of things she would be better off without).  
Yet on some level, one he does not wish to voice just yet, he knows there is no choice. Change must be brought for their people to survive. They’ll die with Meoran if there is none.  
Thakur accepts it (he can’t do anything else). He just hopes she knows the trail she runs. She always did leap without looking where she was putting her paws.

Thakur’s uncertain as to whether he should call her by her given name, especially as she is now, unkempt and desperate like an unnamed one. After being cast aside by Meoran for trying to turn back to the clan and not receiving his pardon, he speaks to her where she’s hidden on the edge of clan ground. Thakur quickly learns her individuality is far from gone. Something even stronger has risen in place of the wild-eyed cub with the torch between her jaws. Thakur can’t put a name to it, but he can feel it the change in the taste of the air, in the eyes Ratha’s tired face carries, settling deep in his chest and limbs.  
_In your eyes, I will always see challenge_. The words Meoran spoke to Ratha churn in Thakur’s mind. With how she looks into the distance, contemplative, he thinks she hasn’t stopped thinking about them, either.  
He finds himself dreaming of open flame.

Thakur can tell Ratha is growing frustrated as he brings food he took from clan kills and news throughout the summer, and then as the autumn begins arriving. He’s surprised she’s still on clan ground, really, though he’s not going to complain. Talking to her is a tense affair, but also a sort of release. He can speak freely with her. That’s not something afforded to clan members these days. It’s not something that’s ever been afforded to clan members. Thakur said Meoran had changed, but his people are still being stamped down, burdened in a way they won’t realize till another takes Meoran’s place and changes things. They have no luxury to think on whether or not they’re afforded as much individuality as they might need while the unnamed grow more restless and the newly trained cubs die protecting the deer in raids.

A storm explodes over the fields, and with a strike of white-blue lightning, fire catches once more. As soon as Thakur sees the flames, as soon as he hears Cherfan asking where Fessran has gone, he knows. The time has come. This is what they’ve all been on edge for.

Meoran’s death is ugly and gruesome, Ratha’s torch shoved between his jaws, her creature licking at his bones. Ratha probably finds it a fitting end. Thakur just tries to stamp down his instinctual horror. Nothing like this has ever happened within the Named that he knows of, no phrase like passing of the torch of leadership being so… intimidatingly appropriate.  
Meoran lies by the stream, body crumpled, fire singing on his pelt. Viewing death feels like such an intimate intrusion. Thakur sees the body of the burning dappleback overlaid over the silver gray coat turning black with flame.  
And there Ratha stands with the fire blazing, lighting the gold in her eyes, the strength of her shoulders, as their people bare their throats to her. Meoran’s tyranny is ended. Now a new leader stands at the head of the Named, one who can bring the change necessary faster, end the unnamed cats run of clan ground. Her people run beside her as she leads them to the final battle against the unnamed. The clan wins, of course, casting the unnamed out and reclaiming their ground. With a young inferno blazing at their head, was there ever any question otherwise?

And again Thakur accepts it. She will run her trail. It will be hard ahead, but she’ll make sure her clan and her people do more than survive. Soon, they will thrive.

Despite the triumph of this battle won, Thakur worries for his friend.

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write something for this series since I first read it (probably approaching a decade ago). They're beautifully written books that have always been an inspiration to me. The way they approach moral questions with these talking cat characters is so interesting... In any case, I wanted to do something, however short, as kind of a love letter, I suppose. I’d like to write more for it, but we’ll see how that goes (Thistle definitely deserves her own one of these.) In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading! I definitely loved writing it.


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